


maybe i'm fooling myself (and you're already gone)

by sergeant_smudge



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort, Finished!, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt, Hurt Napoleon, Hurt/Comfort, Illya and Gaby Are Buddies, Is Angry Illya A Necessary Tag?, Kidnapping, Napoleon Whump, Rescue, Revenge!!!, So many tropes, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2018-12-17 06:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11845938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sergeant_smudge/pseuds/sergeant_smudge
Summary: Napoleon is shot. It's Illya's fault.He'll tear the world apart before he leaves him behind.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from Take It Or Leave It by Cage the Elephant

Napoleon gets shot. Napoleon gets shot clear through the abdomen, and while he’s convulsing on the ground, coughing blood, he’s dragged into a van and taken away.

It’s Illya’s fault.

A misstep, a wrong turn, a false read of the situation.

He knows this, knows it, and the fact fills him with a nauseous panic, one that he feels rising into his throat when Waverly says, “We don’t have the resources to put out an exhaustive search, unfortunately.” And it swells into a white-hot tremor of anger when he hears, “Agent Solo has been officially declared as ‘killed-in-action.’”

The wooden arm of the chair nearly snaps off in his hand. “You are not even going to try to save him,” he says, and maybe it was a question in his head, but it falls flat onto the desk between them.

“As I said, Mr. Kuryakin, U.N.C.L.E can not risk chasing down a single agent, especially when the chance of survival is so low.” Illya nods, stiffly, his eyes fixed on the ugly pattern of the carpet. “But, we acknowledge that Solo was an incredible agent,” he clears his throat.

Illya looks up, face impassive as stone. “And seeing as you were partners, yourself and Miss Teller will be granted three weeks of paid leave, in order to process this loss.”

“Thank you,” Illya says, voice hollow. He is dismissed.

Illya carries his body back to their safehouse, where he finds Gaby rolling up neckties with shaky hands. His chest moves steadily, but he feels curiously out of air.

Solo’s things are almost packed away, but his shoes are lined neatly against the wall.

“Waverly says we leave Cowboy to die,” Illya says, and already he can feel the familiar anger rushing through him, filling the empty spaces that whistle like an empty bottle when he thinks about Napoleon, gasping for breath as he lay dying, clawing at the mud -

Gaby pauses, barely glancing up at him. “He’s probably already dead, Illya.”

He ignores the cold rush at that, ignores the thought that it might be possible to drown in a room full of air. “Maybe. Then we kill the men that killed him. Bury his body in American soil.” Her hand cinches around something blue and silk.

“He told me he wanted to be buried in Paris,” he whispers, eyes closed tight. Illya can feel a heat in his head, a pressure like a storm building. She looks up at him, mouth draw tight. “We don’t have backup?”

Illya shakes his head, hand curling into a fist at his side. He’ll do this by himself if he has to. He’ll burn the world down. He’ll do anything to chase away the image of Napoleon’s eyes, desperate and wide. He’ll fight to keep away the sound of one, two, gunshots, the cry of pain as they tear through him -

“How long do we have?”

Illya’s lips quirk. “Three weeks.”

Gaby tosses the tie down and looks Illya in the eyes. “Let’s do it.”

-x- 

Napoleon wakes up, screaming, in the middle of the first surgery.

There’s an oxygen mask over his face, and hands, _hands_ , inside of his torso, digging around. An arm, barred across his chest, forces him back onto the table. He’s been trained against torture, trained to resist giving up information while drowned, while beaten, while electrocuted, but there are _hands_ in a hole in his stomach, and he screams.

Drugs swirl in his head, like syrup in his veins, like cotton in his mouth, like agony in his bones -

The anesthesia washes over him again, and he falls under.

 -x- 

Illya tears through warehouse after warehouse, crushing the hollow wood doors of abandoned office buildings and forcing open cellar doors with his bare hands.

They work logically, Gaby and Illya, neatly crossing out quadrants of the city as they decimate them in search of Napoleon. Their maps grow more precise as their hope frays, little by little.

Each clawing half-step forward always seems to be followed by a crashing, howling fall backwards. On the fifth day, they find the van abandoned in a lot, Napoleon’s blood soaked into the upholstery. It sends them on a false lead, and Illya nearly chokes out an unrelated burglar in the heat of the moment.

Ten days in, Illya returns to the hotel in the soft early hours of the morning, hands shaking and blood oozing from a cut on his eyebrow. Gaby stirs from where she’d fallen asleep on a pile of notes, the papers rustling as she shuffles them around.

They’re both exhausted, burnt out in the frenzy of searching, of killing and scraping for information.

Illya rages on, but Gaby can tell that he’s tiring too, bones propping him up most days, and eyes drifting shut at the evening wears on. “We’re so close,” Gaby says, a broken record, a mantra, a promise that is beginning to feel like a lie.

“Solo would not give up on us,” he says in German, voice low. Gaby smiles weakly. Illya doesn’t return it.

“He would if there was a good enough distraction.”

They cross another neat square off the map with a black marker. They’re getting closer.

  -x- 

He’s gotten used to waking up in pain.

The waking is the hardest part - the small moment of numbness, before his brain kicks the pain receptors back into action. He can, for that second, believe that everything is okay. Believe that Illya is an arm’s reach away in a soft bed in a safe hotel -

But waking is the hardest part.

Napoleon spends a lot of his time somewhere between asleep and passed out, the combination of overdoses of injected painkillers and blood loss makes staying awake for any extended period of time difficult.

When his eyes are open, they question him relentlessly, slapping him across the face for silence, and beating him for snark. He can’t manage much of the latter, not with his brain a watery mush and the rest of his body out of commission.

The mangled flesh of his stomach was messily sewn together in the surgery, skin around the stitches hot and tight. They pulled a bullet from the mess of his shattered kneecap, bound the whole thing in thick bandages.

He aches through the haze of the drugs, the pain persistent even through the vials of clear liquid. Though, he supposes that the general feelings of loss and confusion are the better alternative to the excruciating daggers of unmedicated wounds.

A sigh, breath rattling through exhausted lungs. Each inhale pulls at his stitches, surely infected. Each exhale is almost his last.

His tormentors are getting impatient.

“You’re not CIA, you’re not KGB. Who the hell are you working for?” an angry shouting, demanding.

Napoleon rouses himself, pointing himself in the direction of the voice. He grins a bloody grin, the cold air whistling through the absence of one of his molars. “I’m not CIA,” he parrots.

It’s a bad comeback, and it earns him a wallop on the temple that sends a black haze into the corners of his vision.

He just needs to stall, he reminds himself.

Illya will find him.

Illya _has_ to find him.

He _can’t_ die here.

They have to be close.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is just... more hurt. so read this for some dense angst

There’s a little rectangular window in the wall on his left side, pressing up against the ceiling. A long, thin crack on the wall in front of him. A duffle bag on a creaking table shoved in the corner. 

A fist, in his stomach,  _ three four five  _ times. 

His head rolls back on his neck, a gurgle passing through his lips. It’s possible it comes out as a scream. He’s lost track of himself a little bit in here.

They’re drilling him on names. Presumably agents of some sort or another, though none of which he recognizes. He supposes it doesn’t matter, in the end. He’s not giving anyone up. Even if it means -

_ Six seven eight nine _ . 

He lets his eyes slide close. 

They stopped dosing him. He’s not sure what was in the little clinking glass vials, but he’s begun to miss it dearly. Truth serum, neurotoxin, whatever. It had taken the edge off a little. 

So now, to keep himself from talking, he counts the hits.  _ Ten eleven.  _ Details the room with the flickers of time where his eyes are open. Window, crack, duffle, table. He bites down on his tongue because he knows that if he releases his jaw, he’ll let pour every secret he knows just to make it  _ stop _ . 

He bleeds, sluggishly, from the digging ache in his shoulder and knee. When he rouses himself enough to clear the wheezing stick in his lungs, coughed-up blood peppers his lips. His head pounds in a steady rhythm, beating heavily behind his eyes. 

They, once, threaten to cut his ear off, going so far as to press the blade up to the base of his skull, and he nearly starts sobbing. Instead, he swallows it down, shoves away the panic and the cold swell of fear in his stomach. And through a traitorously shaking body, he spits, “Illya is gonna fucking  _ destroy you.” _

The man has the audacity to feign fear. “The Russian Giant?” he tuts condescendingly, turning to the table in the corner and digging through the bag there. He pulls out a letter printed on yellow cardstock, dangling it in front of Napoleon. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” 

He stares at it through squinted eyes, head still reeling. “See that line there?” A bloody finger taps the page. “That says, ‘Killed In Action.’ Never thought they would give up so easily on you, huh?”  _ Twelve _ . 

Napoleon swallows the blood in his mouth, biting into his tongue. Illya saw him get hit. Illya ran and dodged the hailstorm of bullets, thinking Napoleon would do the same. “Your partner thinks you’re dead. No one is coming for you, Solo. You’re here for as long as I want to keep you here. So the sooner you start talking, the better.” 

_ Thirteen _ . 

Illya saw him dragged away, too far away to do anything. Illya knew he was good as dead. 

Illya filed the report.

The pain of it all floods him, and he chokes.

There’s blood in his throat, and he’s drowning. No one is coming for him, and he’s dying. He’s seeing shadows in the corners.  _ Fourteen _ . Window.  _ Fifteen _ . Crack.  _ Sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen.  _ Duffle, table,  _ twenty,  _ choking. Choking. A name. A name. A name. 

It’s all too much, and no one is coming for him. Illya thinks he’s dead. Illya thinks he’s dead, and he’s not coming for him. He’s going to die. He’s going to die  _ here _ . 

He loses count. 

-x-

Two weeks gone, and Illya leans a little too heavily into the bottom of a bottle of vodka. A little dizzy, and more sorrowful than ever, he unlatches Napoleon’s suitcase and digs through the precisely folded clothes. 

Slacks, shirts, blazers, all pressed and folded around tissue paper. His fingers twitch against them as he fights the urge to take one of the shirts. He’s warm and a bit fuzzy, and he longs to breathe in the lingering smell of Napoleon’s overpriced cologne, the thick tinge of his hair tonic. 

There’s a pack of cigarettes, crumpled and creased, tucked into a pair of socks at the bottom of the case. A guilty pleasure after a job well done. 

An eyeglasses repair kit. 

And on second glance, a lockpick, disguised as an eyeglasses repair kit. 

Two false passports, a couple hundred euros, a toothbrush. 

A blurry photo of a cafe table in Paris, Illya’s hand barely visible in the corner. 

A tracker, Russian-made, sewn hastily into the lining. 

He nearly loses it then, with Napoleon scattered around him in fragments, false leads at his feet like fallen leaves. Nearly loses himself, but the anger is subdued now. Feeling anything at all making his stomach turn. 

They’ve papered up the walls with red ink and scrawled notes, thick manila folders on every flat surface. Gaby prowls the streets at night, and Illya scrapes the bottom of every clue, reading and re-reading files. They’re no closer to finding him than they ever were. 

And even if they  _ do  _ find him, even if they somehow manage to scrounge a lead in this god-forsaken city, they may not find him whole. After fourteen days, Illya isn’t sure that he can handle seeing Napoleon’s dead body. And, after fourteen days, seeing him alive may be worse. 

He curls into the arm of the couch, lighting a cigarette and leaving it in the ashtray to burn. The acrid smell fills his nostrils, and he can nearly taste it on his lips. 

Can nearly feel a hand carding through his hair. 

Illya starts awake hours later to a dark room, one of Napoleon’s undershirts wrapped tightly around his fist. Hell, he misses him. Misses him like a limb, like an extension of himself, like -

Illya chokes a little, in his sorrow. He longs more than anything for a warm hand on his own. Longs for Napoleon’s affectionate laugh when he can’t remember the English words for wicker and shoelaces and popsicle. Longs for a soft smile in the morning, framed by natural curls. For kisses in the hushed shadows of midnight in Paris, folded up against old brick. Longs for Napoleon. 

Illya has to believe that he's alive, or he may very well go mad. 

When they wake in the morning, the dawn sunlight sickly pale, Gaby does not mention Illya’s red-rimmed eyes. 

-x-

Napoleon’s heart stops. 

They bring him back.

Fifty miles away, Illya shivers. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i SWEAR this was supposed to be the rescue chapter, but then i wrote a thousand words of heavy angst and didn't think that i could let it go to waste. rescue will be... next time probably :)


	3. Chapter 3

Illya burns his fingertips snuffing out a candle, yelps. Tuts when a street cat catches his wrist with a claw. Petulantly mourns his blistered feet in new boots. 

Barely feels as he snaps the necks of two men standing guard outside of a rotting farmhouse in the countryside. Shoves away the feeling as their familiar-smelling cigarettes fizzle on the wet ground.

If they fight back, he hardly notices. If the knuckle in his ring finger cracks against someone’s jawbone, it doesn’t register. He tears through them, Gaby at his side. The last quadrant of their map, blacked out avenue by avenue with hands held carefully still, led them here. It’s their last chance. 

It’s their last hope.

Illya puts his shoulder through the front door, the hollow wood pulling crookedly off the hinges. They split up, searching, shouting. 

Nothing. 

He breathes. Red haze shivers at the edges of his vision. His hands shake.

“He’s not here,” Gaby is saying, saying like it’s true, and the sound sends a rush of that same panic, the cold roiling like he’s being thrown overboard, into his stomach. Illya rushes from the room, striding out into the rain. 

There’s a man, sleight and tall, crouching over the two bodies at the doorway. He pulls his gun, but Illya shoots it from his hand before he can palm it. Illya fires a bullet into his leg and roars, 

_ “Where is he?”  _

The man’s eyes flit to the side, and with a bloody arm, he gestures to the left of the house. Illya leaves him there, his ears ringing with something like a scream.

A wooden hatch, set into the ground. He glances at the heavy padlock once, then busts through through the cellar door and thunders down the steps. 

Rain comes down in a roaring hush, muddy water splashing up around his ankles as he descends into the basement. Illya stumbles onto the cement floor, boots splashing in an inch of water. It’s a small underground room, a skeletal light hanging from the ceiling. 

Small ventilation window in the corner, open drizzling dark water into the room. A weedy crack in the wall. An ancient wooden table. A duffle bag. And--

Solo. 

_ Solo.  _

Shirtless, lashed to an antique chair, head lolling crookedly onto his chest. Bloody. And a man, nearly as tall as Illya, wailing down on him. Fists beating downwards as he shouts. Napoleon folds around each hit to the gut, shoulders twisting against the ropes which hold his hands. 

The man looks up suddenly, as if only realizing Illya has entered. Drenched, muddy, and coated with a fine spray of blood, Illya stands, facing Solo’s tormentor. 

The man opens his mouth, looking pleasantly surprised. “Ah, you must be Mister Kuryakin.” He glances good-naturedly down at Napoleon’s twitching form. “Our  _ Red Peril _ , or so I’ve heard. So glad we can finally meet.” A muscle twitches in Illya’s jaw. “You know, Napoleon here had completely given up on ever seeing you again. It took a little convincing of course, but it was surprising how quickly he gave up hope on his partners - “

Illya’s knife whips across the room. “You talk too much,” he says, as the man falls to the floor, clutching at his throat. Eight ear-numbing shots go off. 

The awfulness of the past three weeks floods him, wailing like radio static as he unloads the magazine. He feels the molten pressure of his anger, the shame and the uncertainty and the fear, all culminating in this, this feeling like cold water in a crucible. Like a detonation. Like the release of a storm cloud; like the final hair-raising crackle of thunder on the horizon. Like an avalanche and a wildfire and like eight bullets to the skull.

The trigger clicks mindlessly as Illya continues to pull at it, his vision hazy. His hand shakes around the gun, and it clatters to the ground. He glances around. Window, crack, table, duffle, two men, one dead. 

One alive. 

Napoleon is soaked and barefoot, his pants ripped at one leg to expose a filthy bandage, soaked through with blood. There’s a bullet wound in his shoulder, the skin red and swollen where it pulls at the crooked stitching. Illya nearly falls at his feet, feeling as though he may shake apart. 

“Cowboy?” he asks quietly, his fingers alighting carefully along Napoleon’s hairline. 

Thick ropes wind up Napoleon’s bare arms, tracing the twisting patterns of the bruises. They spill like ink over the pale skin of his ribs. Deep purple crawls up his neck to meet the hard angle of his jaw. He fights the urge to run his hands up into the lank, untamed curls that hang in front of Napoleon’s eyes, fearing that he may not be able to let go if he does. 

Illya’s shaking hand lightly presses fingertips into the hand-shaped bruises along his jugular. An irregular pulse beats back at him. A tight knot of breath passes his parted lips, drying the blood which trails down his chin. 

Napoleon’s face is contorted in pain, eyes tightly closed. He opens them half-lidded, staring up at Illya from under his eyelashes. “Illya?” he whispers, and it’s more of a broken exhale than anything close to a name, but Napoleon still receives a smile brighter than the sun in response. He thinks he might smile back, but it may come out as more of a grimace. 

Illya’s hands leave him, and barely conscious, Napoleon wonders if maybe he dreamed the moment. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened. He tries to speak again, but the words catch in his dry throat. 

A ripping sound, like ropes being broken, and he’s falling, falling. Not. Illya’s broad hands are pressing against him, pushing him upright. He blinks in the dimness of the room, thoroughly confused. 

“Easy, Cowboy, I just need to get your feet.”

“Illya?” he wonders aloud, not entirely convinced he isn’t dreaming.  _ Window, crack, table, duffle.  _ There’s a dead body in the corner too, now, the wall behind it colored bright red as though splattered with paint.

He pops up in Napoleon’s vision from seemingly nowhere. “Right here, Solo.”

“I thought-” he tries, struggling to breathe against the pain in his ribs. He reaches out a hand, gripping as tight as he can to Illya’s shoulder. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.” 

Illya pauses, then brushes his fingers lightly across Napoleon’s temple. “I’d never leave you,” he says, matter of fact. Then, as if he’d said nothing at all, he lifts Napoleon’s good arm, and slides his between Napoleon’s sore back and the chair. “This is going to hurt. Don’t hold your breath.” Illya swings him upwards into his arms, and in catching his knees, Napoleon lets out a guttural sort of shout. 

His vision wavers a little, and the cold stone of nothing in his stomach makes his head swim.  Illya is blissfully warm, even damp as he is. Napoleon presses his head into his chest, fighting the urge to pass out as the pain in his shoulder thickens behind his eyes. 

Illya looks down at him, shivering as they move up the stairs. He blinks in the sunlight, a face drawn and pale. “Sleep, Cowboy. I will be here when you wake up.” 

He feels the words as they rumble through Illya’s chest, and despite his best efforts, he falls under, feeling safe as can be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS. i cannot finish this thing. the angst just keeps on rolling!!!   
> however, this is pretty much the end of it.
> 
> i do feel guilty about having little to no comfort tho so i'm gonna do one last little chapter of some trope-y hospital/healing nonsense. 
> 
> also just a quick thank you to everyone who has commented because oh my!! i have never gotten so many nice comments from so many nice people <3


	4. Chapter 4

When he wakes, finally, eighteen hours after the surgery is completed, the room is dark. There’s a ribbon of the thin hospital lighting glancing over his legs from the crack in the door, but the curtains are drawn heavily over the window. 

There’s an ache in his head that he can barely feel through the warm hold of the muscle relaxants. He feels the pull of an IV in his arm, the scratch of the papery sheets on his bare legs. 

He breathes, painlessly. 

That alone, feels like a miracle. 

There are hushed voices outside of his room, one distinctly argumentative. He tries to move his head to look, but the dizziness swings heavily through him, pulling a groan from his lips. The voices go quiet.

When the door swings open, he lets his eyes close against the rush of light from the hallway. 

“Solo?” The voice is soft, and too far away to be certain of. It seems to be more of a greeting to the air of the room rather than him. Napoleon tracks Illya’s quiet footfalls, the shuffle of his jacket. “You awake?” He lets the accent settle over him, taking a moment to respond. 

“Not yet,” he whispers into the air, smiling a little as Illya’s shoes scuff on the ground as he stumbles. He settles quickly into the chair at the bedside, dragging it on the slick hospital floors with an awful screeching sound that grates against Napoleon’s ears. 

Cold fingers wrap around his own, and he’s certain it must be the greatest thing he’s ever felt. “Napoleon. How do you feel?” 

“Not great, doc. I think I may be coming down with a cold,” he replies, attempting to inject some humor into the deflated gravel of his voice. Talking is difficult, the words like cement in his mouth. “What’s the verdict?” 

“Two surgeries, both successful. One to pull debris from shoulder and one to replace the kneecap.” Illya’s voice is light and factual, if not quieter than usual. “Broken bones will heal, and Gaby makes sure all of the medication will not kill you if taken with alcohol.” 

He worries at Napoleon’s knuckles with his fingertips, and Napoleon swears he can see that nervous twitch in his jaw, even with his eyes closed. Illya calls him a terrible spy as if  _ he  _ doesn’t have enough tells to fill a book.

“You slept for a long time. We weren’t - I did not know if you were going to wake up.” 

Napoleon lets his eyes open, head tilting towards Illya’s hunched form. He’s in that awful black sweater that Napoleon hates, hair hanging limply over his bloodshot eyes. He looks terrible, and out of place. It’s not a good look on him. 

Pulling his hand free, Napoleon reaches out and pushes the hair back off his forehead. There’s a warmth unfurling in his stomach at the feeling of Illya’s skin under his fingers. It’s been so long. “Penny for your thoughts, Peril,” he offers, sliding his fingers along Illya’s jaw. 

He looks up, eyes shining in the dimness. “I am happy you are alive.

Napoleon huffs a laugh at that. “Yeah, I think I can say the same.” He’s trussed up in every possible way, hard casts and bandages taping him together. All the movement he can manage is the one hand, curling carefully around the nape of Illya’s neck. “I suppose I have you to thank for that.” His voice is soft, as though the quiet is something delicate. 

“You’re welcome,” he replies, strained. He’s aiming for a dry retort, but there’s too much tearfulness gathered in the back of his throat for it to track. For such a monolith of a man, Napoleon decides, Illya really is just a big softie. 

Napoleon laughs a little, so intensely and dizzyingly grateful to be where he is. He pulls at Illya’s neck, smiling with a brightness something like that of a thousand stars. 

Illya stares back at him, eyes just a little too wide. He curls over Napoleon, standing with his arms braced on either side of the bed. Napoleon hooks two fingers in the neck of his shirt, feeling Illya’s heart skitter against his knuckles. 

The smile against each other, Napoleon’s teeth scraping gently on Illya’s lip. “Home sweet home,” he whispers. Illya smiles, tipping up Napoleon’s chin with his fingers. 

“Welcome back, Cowboy.

-x-

Napoleon sleeps some more, a lot more, in the few months that follow. He grinds through physical therapy and quips the whole way, snapping the waistband of Illya’s pants when the trainer’s head is turned.

He calls himself the Bionic Man and complains of creaking joints and rusting, imagining the clinking of metal screws and plates when he runs. The cold seems to tighten all of the hinges, and when it all becomes too much, he curls into Illya, breathing tightly against him. 

Illya complains gently about the behavior, and reads over him when he rests on his legs. Napoleon smiles, pushes down the suffocating feeling of his own heartbeat in favor of listening to Illya’s smooth voice. At night though, when the ache of his shoulder wakes him, or his nightmares shake him upwards with the force of an earthquake, Illya folds around him, holding all of the clanking bits together.

Napoleon is finally put back in the field, and he returns seamlessly. They move as a unit, firing over shoulders and trusting without hesitation. 

Illya, in the small hours of the morning, drags his fingertips over the jagged scar across Napoleon’s shoulder, and tuts quietly. There’s still guilt there, still some awful sense of obligation and filth and shame that holds Illya in a cold light. 

Time and time again, Napoleon pulls his fingers away, and slides their hands together. They fit together, practically clicking into place each night. Their heartbeats never sync quite right. Napoleon’s heart stutters on every fourth breath - a small reminder of their first mission together - while Illya’s thunders on, always just a hair too fast. 

Napoleon exhales against Illya’s chest, hand cast around his hip. 

They fall asleep, feeling as safe as can be.

 

fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it!!!! it's /finally/ done.  
> ty to everyone who commented and followed the story as it was posted.  
> also, where is gaby in this chapter? i totally forgot about her x

**Author's Note:**

> guess who's back with more angst
> 
>  
> 
> in theory, this has a second chapter, which will come soon (lie)


End file.
